July 9th, 2001

We had a Cisco picnic on saturday to a place called Eagleton Resorts, in Mysore road. It is a beautiful place. Almost uninhabited surroundings, and hills with lush green grass covers.. few kilometers away, on the top of a hill, there shines a huge and marvelous statue of Sun God and all his horses. It looks really beautiful and I wanted to go there, but didn't get time to. I haven't read about it anywhere in tourist guides and all, so I assume that it is was built recently, and is made of concrete.

There were usual games, dancing and all that associated with the picnic, and I was a silent spectator , as usual. Fortunately, Nadi and Aravind were with me almost for the whole day, so I didn't feel lonely. Aravind felt that children are enjoying the programme more, because they are not self-conscious and don't feel shy of being watched. I told that I was shy even when I was a child, and my character hasn't changed much after childhood, at least in this aspect.

Yesterday I went to city railway station to book tickets to Madras. Since the ATM had some problem, I didn't had cash, so I had to stand in the counter accepting credit cards. The machine was out of order, so it was "Manual" processing of credit cards. The clerk had a booklet containing the valid credit card numbers printed in microscopic fonts, and with a lens he was examining them to verify the card. The whole process takes 15 minutes for one person. After servicing each person, he has to discuss with his colleagues about the latest political affairs, climate etc. etc. which takes an additional 5 minutes, so totaling to 20 minutes of service time. So had to wait in the queue for almost three hours and it was really tiring. But I should mention about some interesting scenario that was going on in the queue. There was a couple standing in front of me in the queue, who were hugging and kissing (well, almost...) each other without caring much for the surroundings, except for the guy's occasional glances at others with a bit of "PucchaRasa". I was really surprised to see this as it was first time I was seeing this much intimate moments in real time. The girl was extremely beautiful and the "public" (including me) watched and enjoyed all these like scenes from a Hindi movie.

In the evening I watched LohithaDas's masterpiece movie "Bhoothakkannati" in which Mammootty delivers superb performance.

On friday the person from Nagasri book house called me and told that the "Japanese" book I ordered has arrived. One week back only I had ordered it thru Amazon. But that was unabridged version and this is abridged version. Anyway, since he brought it on my request I took it (But actually we cant call it an abridged version... It is actually a collection of 12 chapters from the "early" part of the book... Anyway I will wait for the book from Amazon to come). I was happy to get volume 4 of Ponniyin Selvan as well.